On the feasibility of a quantum sensing protocol designed with electrically controlled spins in silicon quantum dots

Abstract

Though electron spins in electrically defined silicon (Si) quantum dot systems have been extensively employed for physical realization of quantum processing units, their application to quantum sensing has not been active compared to the case of photonic qubits and nitrogen-vacancy spins in diamonds. This work presents a comprehensive study on the feasibility of Si quantum dot structures as a physical platform for implementation of a sensing protocol for magnetic fields. To examine sensing operations at a systematic level, we adopt in-house device simulations taking a Si double quantum dot (DQD) system as a target device where the confinement of electron spins is controlled with electrical biases in a Si/Si-germanium heterostructure. Simulation results demonstrate the fairly nice utility of the Si DQD platform for detecting externally presented static magnetic fields, and, more notably, reveal that sensing operations are not quite vulnerable to charge noise that is omnipresent in solid materials. As a rare study that presents in-depth discussion on operations of quantum sensing units at a device-level based on computational modeling, this work can deliver practical insights for potential designs of sensing units with electron spins in Si devices.